NEW TRAINING DIRECTOR APPOINTED

John Hamilton has been appointed Director of Training and Education with the Faculty of Advocates.

Mr Hamilton (40), who was admitted to the Faculty in 1998, takes over from Pino Di Emidio who had held the post since 2005. He assumes responsibility for the Faculty's training programmes for new and existing members and will carry out these duties while maintaining his own practice at the Bar.

In his 11 years as an advocate John Hamilton has developed a busy practice, mainly in criminal law and spent three years as a High Court prosecutor after being appointed an Advocate-Depute in 2003.

During his time in the Crown Office he led a number of important prosecutions in murder, rape and fraud cases and appeared for the Crown in the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Mr Hamilton has been an active member of the Faculty of Advocates Criminal Bar Association, (FACBA) most recently serving as FACBA's education director.

For several years he has been involved in teaching school pupils about the law and the role of advocates in the Faculty's MiniTrial initiative and the Citizenship Foundation's Mock Trial competition of which the Faculty is one of the main sponsors.

He has been an instructor on the Faculty's skills course since 2002 and is one of the group of senior instructors who have been looking at the way forward for advocacy training.

Mr Hamilton highlights three areas of particular importance for the future:

• Whether and how to implement a system of peer review which might involve observation in practice in court, during consultation and of written work.
• Advocacy coaching: If, as now seems to be accepted, advocacy can be coached, how is that to be achieved?
• How the Training and Education Department deals with the issue of increased specialisation in the training and assessment of members and potential members of Faculty.